Writing in the preface to his A dayly exercise and experience of dethe (1537, STC 25414), Richard Whitford, the early sixteenth-century English Bridgettine Father and prolific author of orthodox devotional literature, explains that

Meditating on this passage in his introduction to A Companion to the Early Printed Book in Britain, Vincent Gillespie has shown that the active engagement by Syon and other religious houses ‘with printers as part of a sustained campaign of defence of orthodox catholic teaching’ is at least as important for the early history of print as was access to the press by Protestant reformers and polemicists. For authors across the confessional spectrum, printed books offered unique material prospects for the dissemination of religious ideas, and the physical and financial opportunities afforded by printed books surely explain the central role of religious printing of all kinds in the development of the trade in English printed books.

The special role of Syon in cultivating interests in print has been central to Gillespie's work, shaping a field that importantly corrects the historical overemphasis on reformed writing in histories of the book in Britain and illustrates the role of late medieval piety in the pre-Reformation print tradition. Indeed, as J. T. Rhodes has shown, the number of printed books either originating from or associated with Syon before 1540 was ‘far higher than for any other religious house or order in England’, a fact that she attributes to the Cambridge education of many of the brethren, and the particular regard accorded to books within the double community. But the production of so many books would seem also to reflect the successful consolidation of markets beyond the abbey's walls.

IN THE FINAL CHAPTER OF HER MOST RE CENT BOOK, Manuscript and Print in London, c.1475–1530, Julia Boffey writes of the chronicler Robert Fabyan that he ‘resided in London for over fifty years and wrote in different contexts and forms about his city's constitution and history’. Like Fabyan, Julia's own writing crosses different contexts and forms, both material and literary. This border-crossing is not only a hallmark of her own scholarship but has also made new forms of inquiry possible for scholars of all kinds. From her earliest work on Middle English lyrics to her most recent publications about the print reception of medieval authors, Julia's writing is typified by a mode of expression that is subtly understated, guiding the reader through arguments that are always searching, frequently groundbreaking and very often inspirational. We mention these qualities at the outset of this introduction because it is impossible to write about Julia's scholarship without simultaneously acknowledging her collegiality. Her generosity and kindness as a scholar are evident in her numerous collaborative endeavours, from co-authored journal articles to co-edited collections of essays and to indispensable works of reference such as The New Index of Middle English Verse.

For Julia, excellent scholarship is a conversation. It is work that engages, listens and responds to other endeavours in the field. This commitment to the health of the wider scholarly community is of course visible in other areas of her curriculum vitae. The many awards and fellowships she has been granted are a reflection of her service to the profession, and while too numerous to list here in full, they are a testament to her substantial contributions to the field. She has held visiting professorships at the University of Colorado (1998), University of Connecticut (2012) and Keio University (2018), and in 2005 she was an instructor on the prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. She has been the recipient of many fellowships from the Huntington Library, San Marino (2011 and 2016) to the Houghton Library, Harvard (2011), and has been a British Academy Research Reader (1995–97) and a British Academy/ Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow (2011).